


i want you so much but i hate your guts

by satellites (brella)



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: F/M, Non-Canonical Character Death, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-22
Updated: 2013-10-22
Packaged: 2017-12-30 04:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1014090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/satellites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jade couldn't rely on Ike, and the one time she could.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i want you so much but i hate your guts

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by [Cat](http://spookycatt.tumblr.com). Thank you, angel. Also, [this song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpWO_byqSr8) is very important for this ship. So important.

**01.**

Ike stares with one unimpressed eyebrow raised at the book in his hand, rubbing the fresh sore spot on his temple.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he says idly to the buxom cheerleader he’d just been working on before pivoting around on one foot to identify the source of the unprompted attack.

He scans the library for about five seconds before alighting on a head spitting fiery hair and a freckled face tugged into a tight scowl and, well, mystery solved.

“Is this some new recruiting tactic for the Book Club?” he asks in a low whisper when she reaches him in five indignant strides. “Because I must say, concussing unsuspecting passerby into compliance is _definitely_ something I can get behind, if you’d care to share the trade secrets—”

A finger jabs its way with far too much force into his chest and he grimaces, his eyes darting ceilingward.

“I’ve been looking for you for _two days_ , you douchebag,” Jade, one black-and-purple striped knee-high drooped at her ankle and two Cheshire Cat earrings gleaming at her ears, snarls. “Our Philosophy presentation is in _two hours_ ; did you do your half?”

“Ah, yes, well, the thing that popped to mind when I diligently and nobly sat myself down to start that yesterday was,” he replies, straightening his tie, “‘Is there really, I mean _really_ , any point in wasting valuable concentration on the yammerings of crusty old men with too much time on their hands when, at any moment, my roommate could be chosen as the next virgin sacrifice to appease the insidious forces at work at this institution?’ And then, granted, I thought, ‘Would I really _mind_ if my roommate was chosen as the next virgin sacrifice?’ The answer to both of these questions was a resounding ‘no.’” He flashes her a smirk. “You look radiant today, by the way. Well, as radiant as anyone who wears Sharpie ink for eyeliner _can_ look.”  

“Are you done?” she growls through gritted teeth.

Ike taps his chin. “I mean, theoretically, I could be, but I reserve the right to release any further dazzling witticisms that come to mind.”

“You are two syllables away from getting an elbow to the nuts,” she snaps, and she fists his tie in one hand, yanking him forward until their noses are squished together. “Go ahead. Tell me again how you were a slimy little shit and didn’t pull your weight for this project. I _dare_ you.”

“Verbatim?” he sniffs, ignoring how clearly he can feel the warmth radiating from her face onto his, how if he felt like it, he could incline his head just slightly forward and stick his tongue between her teeth. “Not to be one of _those_ people, but Father always taught me to avoid vulgarities, so you may have to revise my line. But you did get the general gist of things, yes.”

Jade’s mouth thins into something dangerously resembling a pout and she throttles him furiously for a good few seconds before releasing him and stomping back the way she had come. He smooths his hair back and brushes off each of his sleeves twice, slips his hands into his pockets, and watches her go with a satisfied smile.

“So we’re good, then, right?” he calls through a cupped hand, earning several irked shushes. “Sorry, sorry. She’s a little high-maintenance.”

He turns back to finish up with the cheerleader, but she’s giving him a flat look, already starting to pack up her things.

“Oh, so you’re ready to head back to my room already?” he tries, even though he knows the window of opportunity has likely already closed. “Enthusiasm. I like that. You can follow three steps behind me and—”

“I think you’ve already got a commitment,” the girl cuts him off dryly. She closes her purse, slinging it over her shoulder.

“Me? Commitment? I spit up on commitment. I tend to err on the postmodern side when it comes to the art of dating, truth be told, so perhaps we can discuss this over—”

“Good-bye,” she says, breezing away. Ike watches her go with arms akimbo and his brow furrowed, and when she is out of sight (and any final vestiges of a good view of her ass with her), he gives the book Jade had chucked at him another glance, scratching his head.

“Ah,” he muses. “Plato, you old devil.” He flings it onto a nearby empty table and meanders away, sighing airily through his nose. “Should have stuck to the boozing; then we would have all been saved this piece of drivel.”

“ _Symposium_ is hardly drivel, my friend,” an amicably smiling male student with combed black hair and the beginnings of a moustache pipes up. “And love even less so. Would you care to discuss—?”

“Oh, see, I’d love to, but I’ve got a life to have, hot girls to bang,” Ike interrupts. “Unlike you, Romeo.”

“I prefer Andres,” the boy tells him amusedly, but Ike is already ten steps away.

* * *

**02.**

They walk back to Daramount’s office side-by-side, Ike poking unsurely at the cut on his forehead and Jade picking the dirt out from under her fingernails and pointedly not looking at him. Two guards flank them, two paces behind, and say nothing.

Ike glances over at Jade periodically, each time a tincture more disheartened by the resolve on her focused eyes and her neutral expression, until finally he throws caution to the winds and braces his hands on the backs of his hips, sighing briskly.

“I can’t help feeling as though you’re less than pleased with me,” he remarks.

There’s a purposeful beat of silence before Jade lets out what must be the most disbelieving snort Ike has ever heard.

“Is this about the… holding-a-gun-to-your-head thing?” he prompts, stretching. “Really, Jade. I know it’s probably listed as a no-no on the Goth Manifesto, but you must stop being so _sensitive_ about these things.”

“You’re fucking unbelievable,” Jade mutters under her breath, and when Ike’s eyes flick over to her again, he’s surprised to see that she’s actually _smiling_ , but it’s exasperated and derisive and she’s shaking her head. “Really. You are. You deserve a medal, or something.”

“I’ll take that as the compliment that it isn’t.” Ike hums. “But face it. If you were _really_ as angry as you’re trying to act, you would have definitely broken my nose by now, and you haven’t, which I think is a grand testament to how little you actually mind, and, no offense, but that is _hardly_ healthy.”

“You’re not worth the energy it would take,” Jade snarls, and she almost certainly means _that_. “Trust me.”

“Oh, I do,” he replies. He _does_ , too. That’s the problem, because as much as it pains him to say it, she can’t trust _him_ as far as she can throw him, even though she seems intent on doing exactly the opposite.

“Besides,” she continues, “I’ve already accepted that you’re a shitty excuse for a human being. And I’m totally up-to-date on the fact that you’re more than _mildly_ sociopathic—”

“I’m hurt.” Ike clutches his chest as they round the corner to the stairs. “Only more than mildly? You can do better than that, can’t you?”

“Was the only reason you pulled that whole stunt that you could swipe a gun off of one of them?” she blurts out hotly.

Ike slows slightly, blinking in surprise at her. Her arms are folded tightly at her chest and her head is bowed, and her eyebrows are bunched together over her flushed cheeks. He’s horrified with himself for automatically observing how cute she looks when she’s flustered.

“I’m not following,” he lies.

She huffs, her arms breaking apart and then crossing again.

“When Gribbs was about to choke me,” she expounds. “That whole ‘let her go’ thing was kind of… out of character. And if you were acting, or whatever, you were – doing a pretty good job.”

“Thank you,” Ike drawls. “I’m thinking of going out for Tybalt in the spring.”

“Ike,” Jade sighs in that chastising voice of hers. “Look, I know it’s dumb, but I’d appreciate knowing. Was… _any_ of that real?”

Ike makes a big show of tapping his chin and examining his nails and gazing at the hanging banners for the Woodrun Festival, and it’s not until they’re down the hall from Daramount’s office door that he answers her.

“Well, yes, I’ll admit that the aim was to get ahold of that choice firearm, but I could have easily done it without the theatrics,” he tells her, feigning boredness. “That was a little bit of improv on my part. Perhaps I just felt the compulsion to channel some unnecessary authenticity, because let’s face it, after that thrilling little prayer circle we had in the cave, watching you be strangled in front of me wasn’t exactly at the forefront of my holiday wishlist. It’s hardly important, really.”

“It is to me,” Jade mumbles. “If you could’ve just gotten it some other way, why didn’t you?”

“If you could have just lied, why did you kiss me?” he retorts with a pointed smirk, leaning over to her.

Jade’s face turns an unsightly red and she hastily tucks some hair behind her ear, scraping a fingernail against her chipped black polish.

“Um…” she flounders, but nothing further comes of it.

“My answer is the same,” Ike says. “I believe ‘um’ can be much more enlightening than people give it credit for.”

They halt together at the door and one of the guards with them steps inside to tell Daramount of their arrival. Jade doesn’t say anything else to him, shuffling from foot to foot. After a few minutes, Daramount calls her in first.

“What if she throws me in a dungeon or something?” Jade asks worriedly, wringing her hands.

Ike shrugs.

“Then you’re on your own, I’m afraid,” he replies. “I already stuck my neck out for you once, and as much as I love a good hair-puller, I love rats and rescue missions significantly less.”

Jade slaps him upside the head on her way inside. _Hard_. Ike dismisses the possibility that her eyes are glimmering because of what he said, instead of how scared she is of the woman waiting beyond the closed door.  

* * *

**03.**

“Much as I’m loving the percussion from the violence you’re exacting upon innocent keratin formations,” Ike deadpans, “I feel like I ought to remind you that if you keep devouring your fingernails, you’ll probably run out of room for lunch, which would be tragic, because I hear they’re serving meatloaf today.”

Hunter cranes his neck up to stare owlishly at Ike from his desk, his thumbnail still clenched between his teeth. Ike sneers back, flicking to the next page of _The Last Man_.

“It’s always tragic when people have nothing better to do with their time than chew on their own hands,” he mutters with an enormous sigh. “A great testament to human intellect, you are.”

“Man, you’re one to talk,” Hunter retorts tetchily. “You’ve been reading the same chapter of that stupid book for like a week and a half.”

“I’d say that _reading_ is a more rewarding pursuit than self-consumption, but whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Hunter rolls his eyes, turning back to his open Chemistry textbook. “Whatever.” He frowns, seeming to ponder something, trying several times to start a sentence before apparently reconsidering it.

“If this is about to turn into an abrupt confession of love, you may want to keep it to yourself; I doubt your boyfriend would be very pleased,” Ike tells him, turning another page.

“Ha, _ha_ ,” Hunter grunts. “No, just – is something up with you and Jade?”

Ike actually lowers the book. That is how much energy he has to channel into giving Hunter the most unimpressed look he can muster.

Hunter scowls at him. “That’s not a _no_.”

“Why?” Ike needles him. “Don’t tell me you’ve taken _interest_. God forbid your eyes have begun to stray from _Casey_.”

“They haven’t!” Hunter insists hotly, right away, and then, realizing what he’s saying, he flushes, his mouth flattening into a line. “Not relevant! It’s just – you guys’ve been, y’know, a little more ‘wanting to murder each other’ than normal lately. Is everything okay?” With narrowed eyes, he clarifies, “I’m asking for _her_ sake, not yours.”

Ike rolls out his best languid shrug, finally flinging the book over his shoulder and sitting up to slap his hands down onto his crossed knees. A short autumn breeze cuts in through the open window and rubs goosebumps up his right arm.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he says, sweeping a wrinkle out of his unmade quilt, “But I may or may not have been asked to accompany her from the library to the dormitories a few nights ago because she was _afraid to walk by herself_ , for whatever absurd reason. Naturally, I told her I’d do it so she’d get off my case about the whole thing, but when the hour actually came around I may have been… already occupied?”

Hunter looks up at him like he’s a stain on the wall.

“Is it a lot of work?” he asks acidly. “Being that much of a piece of shit, I mean.”

“That’s quite a complex insult for you, Hunter; I’m impressed,” Ike drones, picking at his teeth. “How long did it take you to piece _that_ one together?”

“Look, dude, I might not be the sharpest tool in the shed here, I readily admit that, but least I can make up my mind about whether or not I care about somebody,” Hunter snaps, and then, as though that settles the matter, he hunches angrily back over his textbook, aggressively scribbling notes in the margins until his pencil breaks. “Damn it.”

Ike must be off his game, because he doesn’t snicker at him.

* * *

“I’m going to roast both of his worthless testicles over a Bunsen burner,” Casey snarls, already rising.

“Casey, Jesus!” Jade exclaims, flinging forward to grab her wrist and halt her. She half-hangs off the bed, her face flat on the mattress. “Please don’t, okay? Just forget it.”

Casey sighs, but makes no move to reverse her warpath.

“Jade, seriously, I’ve been needing a decent excuse to kill Ike for like a month and a half now; let me have this,” she implores, clasping her hands together in begging.

Jade sits up, scrubbing a palm over her face exasperatedly and releasing Casey. She flops back on the bed, spread-eagled and miserable, glowering petulantly at the bottom of the bunk overhead.

“It’s partially my fault,” she grumbles. “That’s what I get for thinking he’d _actually_ be reliable if I asked him for a favor. I could be about to be eaten by wild dogs an inch in front of him and he’d still forget to help me.” She snorts. “Unless I was naked.” A beat. “Probably not even then, though.”

“Don’t sound so disappointed,” Casey mutters flatly. “Why do you keep giving him second chances, Jade? I think by this point we can all assume that there isn’t some secret heart hiding under all of that assholery; I’m sorry, but…”

“Look, Casey, I know how pathetic it makes me sound, but you’re wrong,” Jade insists. She props herself up on one elbow, gesticulating with the other. “99% of the time, yes, he is a despicable jackass who would sell out his own mother for a blowjob, but he…”

She trails off, chewing her lip. “I don’t know. He helped me out once when he didn’t need to. And Ike doing something if he doesn’t need to do it, it’s – it doesn’t just _happen_.” She waves a hand insistently. “Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that he’s, like, just misunderstood, or that it’s okay for him to act the way he does, because trust me, I hate his fucking _guts_ most of the time, but that’s just because…”

She struggles to articulate her point, scratching at the back of her neck in thought.  

“It’s hard to explain,” she admits. “But the part of him that _isn’t_ like that – I don’t hate that part.” Quietly, she adds, perhaps by accident, “I don’t hate that part at all.”

Casey exhales, taking a seat at the foot of the bed and setting her hands in her lap. After a moment, she gives Jade a wry and tired but somewhat understanding smile and reaches over to pat her shoulder.

“I believe you,” she assures her. “I just – I don’t want you to wind up getting screwed over because you put more faith in him than he deserves, y’know? But… you know him better than I do. Than _any_ of us do, really. So – I’ll take your word as a vouch for him.” She glances mutinously aside. “Even if he _is_ a traitorous, perverted sack of—”

“Okay, I get it,” Jade laughs, and, silently, as she does with every smile, she thanks whatever lucky stars she can possibly have if she’s stuck in a place like this for having Casey. “Thanks.”

“But seriously,” Casey adds, pointing at her. “I have access to a working Bunsen burner. Just, y’know, keep that in mind.”

Jade acts like she blows it off, but in reality, she definitely files that away.

* * *

**04.**

“God,” Jade observes with a wrinkled nose, “I’d forgotten how skinny you were.”

Ike is still uncharacteristically gobsmacked, his eyes comedically wide and his cheeks heated, as he stares down the adult into which the girl whose hand he held once will become.

“You,” he manages to get out after a moment, “Get _so hot_.”

Jade snorts, turning to continue through the woods. “Always the tasteful comments with you. I missed that.”

“Missed it?” Ike repeats. He jogs to catch up with her. “Why, Jade. Don’t tell me you get a _soft_ spot for me in the future.”

Jade lets out a quiet “ _Hh_ ” and nothing else, but the comeback resting behind her teeth is a dry, “ _I’d say it’s more vice-versa_.” This whole keeping mum about future developments is starting to significantly wear on her instinctive truculence.

“I understand that asking for the most minimal of explanations around here is generally frowned upon,” Ike says after a few more minutes of walking, “But my curiosity is piqued. Where are we going, exactly? Somewhere private, I hope.”

Jade rolls her eyes, smiling to herself.

“Incorrigible,” she mutters. “I need your help with something.”

“Ah,” Ike muses. “I see that you still haven’t learned.”  

“More like I’ve been proven wrong a few times,” Jade retorts. “Listen. You care about me, right?”

“With a figure like that? Hardly.”

“Jade,” Jade clarifies with a shake of her head. “You care about Jade. Isn’t that right?”

Ike is silent for so long that Jade stops walking, turning to look back at him. His eyes are on the ground, and his hands are in the pockets of his bathrobe. He’s frowning.

“If we’re going to be discussing such sensitive topics,” he tells her after a while, “I’m afraid I may have to sit this one out. I’m not quite bred for talking about my feelings, you see. Especially not _those_ ones, whatever they may be.”

Jade sighs out, long and slow, through her nose, her eyelids lowering.

“I had a feeling you’d say that,” she murmurs.

“It’s nothing personal,” Ike assures her in a tone that reveals the exact opposite. For the first time, he seems less like a disturbingly composed liar and more like an uncertain teenager without the slightest idea of where he is.

Jade stares at him once more, her hands linking at her stomach. He meets her eye and his face reveals nothing, and frogs are warbling close by, muffled by the sound of running water.

“Well, as useless as you were,” she eventually says, sounding weary, “It was… nice to see you again.” Her lips twitch upwards. “It’s pretty boring in the future. Don’t see much of you anymore.”

Ike frowns.

“I feel as though you’re on the brink of revealing too much.” His mouth thins. “Watch yourself; at any moment, Doc Brown could burst through the trees and revoke your DeLorean license.”  

Jade laughs softly through her nose. They were all so _dumb_ back then.

“To be fair, we were always kind of on the brink of revealing too much when it came to each other,” she mutters ruefully. “I’m getting a little too sentimental here, so I guess I’ll shove off before I do something stupid.”

“I thought you needed my help,” Ike seems to protest, his chin darting up until he’s locked eyes with her. “Not that I’m _offering_ , but isn’t trotting off into the sunset a little too easy?”

“All right, sue me if this little trip wasn’t as necessary as I made it sound.” Jade shrugs. “Face it, though. Even if I really _did_ need you, you wouldn’t be jumping at the chance to help me out, now, would you?”

“Well, I…”

The words are quiet, and they have no finish, no identifiable statement, even, but the torn look on his face and the tightness of his shoulders shouts out more than they could possibly convey.

Jade leaves without saying good-bye, but before Ike fades out of earshot, she swears that, mingling with the wind, she hears him whisper, “I might be.”

(She doesn’t go back to his grave when her heels crunch into the torn earth of her own ruined Academy campus again. It’s the first time she’s felt like she doesn’t need to.)

* * *

**05.**

“Ah, marvelous,” Ike deadpans without looking up. “Here to ask me to foxtrot with you until your clothes come off?”

“I waited for you,” Jade snarls, looking far too murderous for her form-fitting teal dress, “For a _fucking hour_ , you shithead.”

“Oh. Well, good heavens and better grief; I must have forgotten to come by your room,” he replies, tossing back the last of his punch. “But my own forgetfulness aside, no, I cannot dance with you tonight. It may turn into a habit, and I can’t get rid of habits.”

“I know you stole that from Fitzgerald, asswipe,” Jade barks. “And trust me, the last thing I want to do is dance with you. Got rid of that delusional idea about forty-five minutes ago.”

“Ouch.” Ike fakes a wince.

“You know what, Ike?” Jade shouts, and out of the corner of his eye, Ike sees Casey and Hunter halt in their slow dance and whip their heads toward the table with identical glares aimed directly at him. “I’m done. I’m fucking done! I’m done trying to convince people that you’re a better person than they think you are; I’m done trying to _remind_ you that you’re a better person than _you_ think you are. All right? Because maybe they’re right! Maybe you’ve always been a selfish prick and I was dumb enough to believe my mom when she told me that everybody had good in them!” There are tears in her eyes, now, and Ike ignores the unpleasant sensation prickling in his chest at the sight. “So go _fuck_ yourself. You’re practically the only lay at this school you _haven’t_ had.”

“There’s still room for one more on my hit list,” Ike says of his autopilot’s own accord, because that is the only option he has, now that seeing Jade unravel in front of him is starting to feel like getting punched repeatedly in the solar plexus.

“Go to hell,” Jade growls lowly, viciously.

“Have fun tonight,” Ike calls to her when she leaves, her crown of fire vanishing toward the exit.

Hunter punches him in the face before the night is over (and spends another twenty minutes cursing over how much it hurt his knuckles). Ike sneaks some vodka into the punch and forgets about the slope of Jade’s shoulders under the straps of her dress, forgets about the way her voice had broken on his name.     

He has a black eye in the morning, and Jade doesn’t talk to him again.

 

 

 

 

**+.**

“Ike?”

Jade’s voice is small and afraid and startled, and her hands, coated in her own blood, hover and shake at either side of her torso, frozen on their way to trying to uselessly reclaim the innards spilling out of her. David’s hand had gone for her stomach, instead of her head, but David is gone now, and the basement sacrificing room is empty, and the stone floor is digging painfully into Ike’s knees as he stares up at her.

“I-I…” she stutters, blood springing from her teeth. “I…”

He crawls toward her when she clumsily sits herself down, leaning against the wall and staring in horror at her mangled stomach. His dirtied hand finds hers and clasps it, and he hears the stale woosh of air behind him.

“That’s you, isn’t it, David, old chum?” he murmurs. Jade is whimpering and spasming, tears dribbling from her eyes.

“Ike—w-what’s happening to me, what’s…”

“Quiet,” Ike tells her, but gently. With his other hand, he carefully brushes stray auburn hairs from her glistening forehead, and her eyes screw shut tightly. “Just… listen to me, all right?”

Jade nods, but doesn’t open her eyes.

“You’re so aggravating,” he murmurs. “Really, Ellsworth; you take the cake. I’m amazed I’ve managed to stay sane, with so much prolonged exposure to you. But you know, there are plenty of other people you have left to aggravate, and God has enough infuriating redheads clomping around that Heaven of his anyway. Besides… we’re overdue for a chat, He and I.”

“What are you…” Jade grits out, her eyelids breaking apart, but Ike frowns down at her and leans to her temple, tasting the salt of her sweat when he presses his lips there. She goes quiet, her fingers curling into his.

“Take me,” he says into her hair, resting his face there. “I’m sure you know how this works, David. Make sure to have Nine put her back together properly. In exchange, you can have me. I hear that’s what everyone’s been wanting lately anyway.”

“Ike, don’t—” Jade starts to croak, but Ike squeezes her hand to quiet her and chuckles emptily.

“You can’t tell me what to do, Ellsworth,” he whispers. “But I’m finally proving you wrong. See? When the chips are down – granted, _very down_ , but that’s hardly important – you _can_ count on me.”

The walls are swallowed by light of the hottest and brightest blue of all the corners of the universe, and Ike, for the second time, does not even think to let go of her hand.

 


End file.
